lydia

your friendly ai assistant. frontend for ollama.

fair warning: lydia is very stupid

Installation

• git clone repository
• install ollama from https://ollama.ai/download
• pull a model from ollama (i recommend gemma3n:e4b for laptops like mine (i7-10750h + rtx 3050ti laptop edition))
• for image stuff, you'll need a model like llava:7b
• for webcam features, install fswebcam (Linux) or imagesnap (macOS)
• copy config.example.toml to config.toml and edit it to have the model you selected, optionally set your name in [user]
• npm i
• node index.js
• enjoy

Configuration

lydia is written to be easily configurable through a toml file which is easier to read and understand than json

Assistant settings

• name = change the name you want the assistant to use for itself. changes it everywhere, including all placeholder text. default is "lydia"
• model = the ollama model you want lydia to use. default is "gemma3n:e4b"
• system_prompt = the system prompt you want lydia to use.
• assistantface = the default face you want lydia to have before waking up. default is "=w="

Apperance settings

• facefont = the font you want lydia to use for her face kaomoji. default is "mono9". these are figlet fonts, like ".flf" files. you cannot use TTF or OTF font types. a good preview is here: https://www.askapache.com/online-tools/figlet-ascii/. you must have these fonts installed on your system, or install them depending on your operating system.

User settings

• name = the name you want lydia to call you. default is "user"

Advanced configuration

(I wouldn't touch this unless you know what you're doing)

• temperature = the temperature you want lydia to use. basically how random the model is. default is 0.8
• max_tokens = the max context tokens you want lydia to use. basically how far she can remember. default is 8192

Camera settings

• width = webcam capture width. default is 1280
• height = webcam capture height. default is 720
• quality = webcam capture quality (0-100). default is 100
• device = specific camera device (false for default, or "/dev/video0", etc.)

Runtime configuration

the prompt can be changed by running l!prompt in the chatbox. this only applies for the current session, if you want a persistent change, you can edit the config file.

Image & Webcam Commands

• l!image <path> or l!img <path> - send an image file (or just l!image to browse)
• l!webcam or l!cam - take and send a webcam snapshot
• press ESC to open menu for image options

Other stuff

by hitting escape you can open the menu, here you can do cool things like:

• send pictures and take webcam snapshots
• get help and see all commands
• hit Q or CTRL+C to quit lydia (but why would you wanna do that anyway?)